Chapter 4

They [the missionaries] secure some adherence to the Christian religion, no doubt, but what is the value of the Christianity? It possesses, so far as we have been able to judge, neither stamina nor backbone. Foreigners at Hong Kong, and at the Treaty Ports, fight shy of Christian servants, a very general impression existing that they are less reliable than their heathen fellows; and with regard to the Christians in their own villages and towns, there is always a suspicion of interested motives.

Are these Chinese converts the class of the Chinese from which truth is to be gleaned? Is the testimony of such people of the slightest value? Yet these are the persons from whom the missionaries derive their knowledge of opium smoking and its alleged baneful effects. I venture to say that among all the so-called Christian converts in China you will not find five per cent. who are really sincere—all the rest profess Christianity to obtain some personal advantage. These so-called converts are generally people from the humblest classes, because, as I have mentioned, people of the better class, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, not only consider their own religion superior to the Christian’s creed, but they would be ashamed to adopt Christianity, as they would thus be disgraced and make themselves appear ridiculous in the eyes of theirneighbours; and they are a people peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. I will not say that there are not some true converts to be found among Chinese congregations; if there are none, the missionary clergymen are certainly not to blame, for they are indefatigable in their exertions to make converts, proving also by their blameless lives the sincerity of their professions. As I have said, the difficulty attending their efforts is enormous. It must be remembered that in China we are not teaching Christianity to the poor African, or the semi-civilised native of Madagascar or the Fiji Islands; but that we are dealing with civilized men, who consider their own country and literature, customs and religion, far superior to those of England or of any other country in the world. The Chinese are so convinced of this, that the very coolies in the streets consider themselves the superiors of the foreign ladies and gentlemen that pass, or whom, perhaps, they are carrying in their sedan chairs.

I hold the missionaries altogether responsible for the hallucination that has taken possession of the public mind on the opium question. With the Bible they revere in their hands, they think the Chinese should eagerly embrace the doctrine it inculcates, and, unable to account for their failure, they readily accept the subterfuge offered by certain Chinese for not accepting Christianity or attending to their teaching. They feel that it is, or may be, expected of them in this country, that they should have large congregations of native proselytes, such as, I believe, the missionaries have in Madagascar, and in like places, forgetting that no parallel can be drawn between such races and the Chinese. The Protestant missionary clergymen in China are, not unnaturally, anxious to account for their supposed failure in that large and heathen country. They would not be human if they were not. The better class of Chinese, as I have said, will not listen to a missionary, or argue with him. They do not want to hear lectures on Christianity, and grow impatient at any disparaging remark about their own religion. They simply say, “We have a religion that is better than yours, and we mean to stick to it.” The missionaries, however, think they ought to have better success. They are, no doubt, indefatigable in their labours, and as they do not meet with the results that ought, they consider, to follow from their labours, and as their sanguine mindscling to any semblance of excuse for their shortcomings, they accept the stale and miserable subterfuge, to the use of which their converts are prompted by the Mandarins, that the Indo-China opium trade is vicious, and that before Christianity is accepted by the country, the trade in question must be abolished. This transparent evasion of the Chinese appears to me to bear too strong a family likeness to the famous “confidence trick,” with which the police reports now and then make us acquainted, to be entertained for a moment.

The Chinese, knowing the weakness of the missionaries, play upon it; and one of the best instances I can give you that they are successful is this:—They tell them that the Chinese Government objects to the opium trade upon moral grounds; but it never occurs to the missionaries to retort and say, “If so, why does your Government not prevent the cultivation of opium throughout China? In the provinces of Yunnan and Szechuen, and all over the Empire, indeed, enormous crops of opium are raised every year; why does not your Government, knowing, as you say, that the effects of opium are so fatal, put a stop to the growth of the deleterious drug?” This question would prove rather a difficult one to answer, though the Mandarins, skilful casuists as they are, would no doubt invent some specious one which might impose upon their interrogators. The mental vision of our missionary friends is so limited to one side only of the question, that even here they might be taken in by the astute natives. It is only of late that the Chinese Government has taken up the moral objection, and the reason, I believe, it has done so is because it has found out the weak side of the missionaries, probably throughThe Friend of China, published at Shanghai.

When it is taken into account that of late years the average quantity of Indian opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests, each of which, for all practical purposes, may be called a hundredweight, and that the price of each of these chests landed in China is about seven hundred dollars, and that the whole works up to something like sixteen millions sterling, the strong objection of the Mandarin classes to allow such a large amount of specie to leave the country becomes intelligible. Rapacious plunderers as they are, they see their prey escaping them before their veryeyes, and are powerless to snatch it back. These sixteen millions, they think, would be all fair game for “squeezing” if we could only keep them at home. For although China is an immense empire, with great natural resources, it is still a poor country as regards the precious metals. No doubt an economist would tell these Mandarins: “It is true we sell you all this opium, but then we give you back again all the money you pay for it, with a great deal more besides, for the purchase of your tea and silk.” But a Mandarin would only laugh at such an argument. “Ah,” he would say, “you must have tea and silk in any case; you can’t do without them. We want to get hold of your silver and give you none of ours in return.” That is the true cause, or one of the true causes, of the objection of the Government of China to the importation into that country of Indian opium.

The missionaries, or at all events the greater number of them, have adopted the view, that if they could only put a stop to the importation of Indian opium into China the evangelization of the country would be a question of time only; and in one sense, indeed, this would be true; but the time would not be near, but very distant. The Chinese have a keen sense of humour, and if the British would allow themselves to be cajoled by the specious arguments with which the religious world here is constantly regaled about the opium question, so far as to put a stop to the traffic, such a feeling of contempt for English common sense, and in consequence for the religion of Englishmen, would ensue, that the spread of the Gospel in China would be greatly retarded indeed. The truth about opium is so clear to those who trust to the evidence of their senses, and who look at facts from a plain common sense point of view, that they cannot for a moment see that there is any connection whatever between opium and Christianity. It seems to me that those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine, and scatter it abroad, are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that. No better example of this can I give you than by referring to a speech made by a gentleman deservedly respected by the community, whom I have always considered as one of the hardest-headed men sitting in the House of Commons, possessing sound common sense upon all subjects save that of opium. I refer to Sir J. W. Pease, the Member for SouthDurham. In the year 1881 the usual anti-opium debate came on in the House of Commons. Sir J. W. Pease delivered a speech on the occasion denunciatory of the Indo-China trade, in the course of which he referred to the treaty recently made between China and America, one of the clauses of which provides that American ships shall not import opium into China, and that no Chinaman shall be allowed to import opium into America, where there is a large Chinese population, especially in San Francisco. The treaty relates to other matters, and this clause is, so to speak, interpolated into it, for a purpose I shall now explain. It was intended to appear as a sort ofquid pro quo, for whilst America, in fact, gave up nothing, though she affected to do so, she obtained some commercial advantages by the treaty. This is the clause:—

The Governments of China and of the United States mutually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States; and citizens of the United States shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition, which extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, to foreign vessels employed by them or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, and employed by other persons for transportation of opium, shall be enforced by appropriate legislation on the part of China and the United States, and the benefits of the favoured claims in existing treaties shall not be claimed by the citizens or subjects of either Power as against the provisions of this article.

I happened to be weather-bound in Rome when I first read, in a Hong Kong paper, that amusing and deceptive treaty, which was made in 1880. Knowing thoroughly the situation, and all the facts connected with the Indo-China opium trade, I undertake to assure you that so far, at least, as regards this opium clause, that treaty was simply a farce. With the single exception of a line of mail packet steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco, America has few or no steamers trading in the China seas. She has protected her mercantile marine so well that she has now very little occasion for exercising her protection. She has no vessels trading between India and China, and never has had any, and, as a matter of fact, no American ships carry one ounce of opium between India or China, or to the port of Hong Kong, or have carried it for many years, if, indeed, any American vessel has ever done so. Nor is there, indeed,at present the slightest probability that her ships will ever convey opium between India and China. America, in fact, might, with as much self-denial, have undertaken not to carry coals to Newcastle as Indian opium to China. There are regular lines of British steamers plying between the ports of Bombay, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, by which all Indian opium for the China trade is carried direct to its destination.

I declare that anything more absurd, deceptive, and dishonest never formed the subject of an international treaty. The whole affair was so utterly false and misleading that the first thing I did after reading the treaty was to cut it out from the newspaper and forward it, with an explanatory letter, to the “Times,” the usual refuge of the aggrieved Briton. This deceptive clause was intended simply to mislead the simple, benevolent, good-natured John Bull, already, as the framers of the treaty no doubt supposed, half-crazed on the anti-opium movement. A better specimen of American smartness and Chinese astuteness could hardly be conceived than this crafty and fallacious clause. America has no opium to sell or import, and can, therefore, afford to be extremely generous on the point. It is just possible, however, that at a future day opium may be produced in the South-Western States, in which case the American Government—I will not say the American people, for I holdthemin great respect—will endeavour to wriggle out of this precious treaty, just as they are now trying to do as regards the Panama convention with this country, when the possibility that gave rise to it is likely to become a reality. The stipulation that Chinese subjects should not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States is of course absolute nonsense. If the American Government had really intended to prohibit opium from being imported from China, or elsewhere, into their country they should not have confined the prohibition to Chinese subjects, but have extended it to all nationalities; in fact, to have made opium, save for medical purposes, contraband. To explain this point more clearly, you will remember what I have mentioned before, that the exclusive right to manufacture crude opium into the form used for smoking, called in China “prepared opium,” is farmed out. The present farmer pays the Government of Hong Kong two hundred and five thousand dollars, or forty thousand pounds a year for the monopoly. The reason whyhe pays so large a sum for this privilege is because of the facilities it affords him for exporting it to other places, and not merely to get the exclusive right of preparing and selling the drug in Hong Kong, for if that were all the benefit to be derived from the monopoly he would not give so large a rent for it. The greater source of profit arises from the circumstance that the Chinese must have the beloved stimulant wherever they roam. If you go to Australia, the Philippine Islands, the Straits, Borneo, or the town of Saigon in French Cochin China, or wherever else dollars are to be made, you will find Chinese in abundance. Go to the South Seas, go to the Sandwich or the Fiji Islands, you will discover the Chinese happy and prosperous, and you will always see in their houses the opium pipe. The advantage of having the exclusive privilege in Hong Kong of preparing and selling opium consists in this, that it is the terminus of an American line of steamers which ply between that port and San Francisco. It is also the port from which British lines of steamers run to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. These packets always take with them consignments of prepared opium ready for smoking, because at these places there are large and well-to-do Chinese communities who can afford to indulge in the national luxury of opium smoking. I have already told you that I was for about ten years solicitor for that opium firm, and I happen to know a great deal about the prepared opium trade through that medium. The Chinese in California, where there is an immense number of those people, do not consume less, I should say, in the course of a year than one hundred thousand pounds worth of prepared opium. As is the case in Hong Kong, the Chinese have better means to buy the drug there than they would have at home. They get high wages, keep shops, are excellent tradesmen, and can live and make money where a European would starve. They are all, in fact, well-to-do, and wherever a Chinaman has the money he must have his opium pipe. Therefore the privilege of supplying the Chinese in California, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and in the South Sea Islands, where are large China colonies, is enjoyed by the opium farmer of Hong Kong, because he has the means of shipping the drug by steamers direct to those places, thus out-distancing all other competitors.This trade, notwithstanding that wonderful treaty, is still going on, and not one ounce of opium less than was shipped before its ratification is now being carried to San Francisco, and in American bottoms too, for the treaty only says that noChinamanshall import opium into America; there is no prohibition against Americans or Europeans doing so. What the opium farmer now does, if indeed he has not always done so, is to get an American or other merchant in Hong Kong to ship the drug for him in his own name, handing him, the opium farmer, the bill of lading. The opium is accordingly shipped in the name of Brown, Jones, or Robinson, and on its arrival at San Francisco the opium farmer’s consignee takes possession of it, and it is distributed by him among his countrymen in that flourishing city.

If Sir J. W. Pease were not an enthusiast, ready to swallow without hesitation everything which seems to tell against the opium traffic, and to disbelieve everything said or written on the other side of the question, he would have seen through all this as a matter of course. This is what he said about the treaty in the speech I have referred to, having first delivered a philippic on the enormities and terrible wickedness of the traffic:—

Only last year a treaty was entered into between the United States and China, and one of the articles of that treaty distinctly stated that the opium trade was forbidden, and that no American ship should become an opium trader—a fact which showed that the Chinese authorities were honest in their expressed desire to put an end to the trade.

Sir J. W. Pease is the most confiding of men; to my mind the treaty should be construed in a very different sense. Sometimes, when we want to convey our sentiments to another, we do so indirectly. There is a very well understood method of attaining that object. Instead of opening your mind to Mr. Jones, who is the object of your intended edification, you will in Mr. Jones’s presence address your remarks to Mr. Brown; but in reality, although you are speaking to the latter, you are speaking at the former. Now the whole object of this precious article of the treaty was to play a similar piece of finesse. Both nations well understood what they were about; they were simply trying to hoodwink and make fools of John Bull by putting into thetreaty this false and hypocritical clause, which, as between themselves, each party well knew meant nothing to the other. Here is Sir J. W. Pease, a sensible and astute man of business, with his eyes open, yet, blinded by his good nature and anti-opium prejudice, falling into the trap set for him, and allowing himself to be deceived by this transparent piece of humbug, and quoting in the House of Commons this “bogus” treaty as evidence that the Indo-China opium trade is so infamous that the American Government intended, so far as they were concerned, to put a stop to it, and that the Chinese Government wish to abolish it on moral grounds. I give you this as an example of the lengths to which otherwise sensible gentlemen will go when smitten with opium-phobia, and how oblivious they become under such circumstances to actual facts. Imagine how his Excellency Li Hung Chang, that very able Chinese statesman, and those smart American diplomatists who have thus posed as anti-opium philanthropists, must have enjoyed the fun of being able to so completely bamboozle an English member of Sir J. W. Pease’s reputation!

Now, although I have exposed this Americo-Chinese juggle, I am far from meaning to cast the slightest imputation upon Sir J. W. Pease, whose personal character I in common with the whole country hold in the very highest respect. I am well assured that in bringing forward his motion in the House of Commons he was actuated by a sense of duty, and the very purest motives, and that in referring to the treaty in question he fully believed in itsbona fides; upon this point I am at one with his warmest admirers. No one deservedly stands higher as a philanthropist and Christian gentleman, and, save as regards this opium delusion, no man has ever made a nobler use of an ample fortune than he.

I may speak in the same terms of the venerable and universally-respected nobleman who is the president of the Anti-Opium Society, whose whole life has been devoted to the welfare of his fellow men, especially those who stood most in need of his help. I referred in the first edition of this lecture to a Most Reverend Prelate, honoured and beloved both by his own countrymen, and, I believe, the whole Christian world, who is also, I deeply deplore, a believer in the anti-opium delusion, but in doing so nothing was farther from my intentions than to lay aside for a moment therespect that was due to him as a man and a high dignitary of the church. I revere and honour him and admire his great and noble qualities as much as any man living. Born and brought up as I have been in the Church of England, and sincerely attached to its doctrine and teaching, having near and dear relatives, too, ministers of that church, the last thing I would be capable of doing is to harbour an unkind thought, or utter a disrespectful word, against any of her clergy, much less one of her most honoured prelates. These three good and upright men are, I am sorry to say, but types of a great many other most estimable people, many of them ornaments to their country, who through the purity and overflowing goodness of their hearts, have been dragged into the vortex of delusion set afloat by the Anti-Opium Society—who allow themselves to be cajoled and victimised—led by the nose, in fact, by anti-opium fanatics, who, cunning as the madman and perfectly regardless of the means they resort to in the prosecution of what they consider right, bring to their aid the zeal of the missionary and the power for mischief which superior education and mis-directed talents confer. This is what rouses one’s indignation and compels me to pursue the unpleasant task of discrediting and otherwise painfully referring to men whom, apart from this wretched opium delusion, I honour and respect.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from referring to a gentleman of high standing, who had formerly been in China, and really ought to have known better. That gentleman went so far as to write a letter to the “Times,” in which he said that out of one hundred missionaries in China there was not one who would receive a convert into his church until he had made a vow against opium smoking. Bearing in mind that all these so-called converts made by these one hundred missionaries belong for the most part to the very poor, if not to the dregs of the people, I should think no missionary clergyman would find much difficulty in obtaining such a pledge. He has only to ask and to have. If a clergyman in a very poor neighbourhood in the East End of London proposed to his congregation that they should promise never to drink champagne, he would receive such a pledge without difficulty from one and all; but if any kind person were afterwards to give them a banquet ofroast beef and plum-pudding, with plenty of champagne to wash those good things down, I am afraid their vow would be found to be very elastic.

So it is with the congregations of these missionary clergymen; there is not an individual amongst them who would refuse to enjoy the opium pipe if he got the chance, however much they might declaim against the practice to please the missionary. Opium, as the missionaries must well know, is a luxury that can only be indulged in by those who have the means of paying for it. Now, while twopence or threepence may appear to us a very insignificant sum, such will not be the opinion of a very poor person. Threepence will purchase a loaf of bread. So it is with the Chinese, especially those residing in their own territory. There is only one class of coin current in China. It is known by Europeans as “cash.” Ten should equal a cent, or a halfpenny, but owing to the inferiority of the metal they are made of, twelve or thirteen usually go to make one cent of English money, so that ten cents, or fivepence of our money, would be about one hundred and thirty cash. A poor Chinaman possessing that sum would think that he had got hold of quite a pocketful of money, and so it would prove, so far as regards a little rice or salt fish, which forms part of most Chinamen’s daily food; but were he so foolish as to indulge in opium, a few whiffs of the pipe would soon swallow up the whole. And then there arises the difficulty of getting the cash, so that it is really only people having command of a fair amount of money who can afford to indulge, habitually at all events, in the luxury of the pipe.

Now with respect to the alleged evil effects of opium smoking, you will constantly hear stories from missionary sources of wretched people, the slaves of the opium pipe, crawling to the medical officers of missionary hospitals, who are to a certain extent missionaries themselves, and asking to be cured of the terrible consequences of their indulgence in opium smoking. The medical officer at each of these missionary institutions, a victim himself, in most cases, to the delusions set afloat, accepts their story, pities the men, and takes them into the hospital; and, believing that if they do not get a moderate indulgence in opium smoking they will pine away and die, the good, easy man, full of kindness andsimplicity, gives them a liberal allowance, which his patients are delighted to get. Knowing the bent of mind of the confiding doctor, they fill him with all kinds of falsehoods as to the evils attendant upon opium smoking in general, which he swallows without a particle of doubt. The truth, however, is that those men who go with such tales to the medical missionary are in most, if not all, cases simply impostors, generally broken-down thieves, sneaks, and scoundrels—the very scum of the people. No longer having energy even to steal, they are driven off by their old associates, to starve or die in a gaol. These men are the craftiest, the meanest, and the most unscrupulous on the face of the globe. They well know all that the missionaries think about opium smoking, and, like the accommodating Mr. Jingle, they have a hundred stories of the same kind ready to pour into the ears of their kind-hearted benefactors, who become in turn their victims. Much merriment, I have no doubt, these scamps indulge in amongst themselves at the good doctor’s expense; for the Chinese are not deficient in humour, and have a keen sense of the ludicrous. These people crawl to one of the hospitals; the doctor is delighted with their stories, for they confirm all he has written home or published, perhaps inThe Friend of China. He communicates with the missionary; their stories are sent home, and the patients get for three or four weeks excellent food and comforts, including plenty of opium, before they are turned out as cured. The lepers have been cleansed and made whole, but only to enable them to prey once more upon the industrious community. I may here observe that there are no missionary hospitals in Hong Kong, and so we never hear of those wonderful stories happening in that place, yet, if such stories were true, it is there that the strongest corroboration of them should be found, for, although there is no missionary hospital in the colony, there is the large and well-managed civil hospital, as also the Chinese Tung-Wah Hospital, both of which are subject to the inspection of Dr. Ayres.

Such are the tales, and such the authors who have caused much of this clamour about opium smoking. There is scarcely a particle of truth in any one of those stories. No man can indulge in opium to such an extent as to harm himself unless he possesses a fair income, and if such aperson became ill from over-indulgence, he would not go to a foreign hospital, but would send for a doctor to treat him at his own house. It is only the broken-down pauper, thief, or beggar, who, in his last extremity, seeks admission to the hospital.

Dr. Ayres was the first to expose this imposture. On arriving at Hong Kong he found it had been the custom there to allow such of the prisoners in the gaol as were heavy smokers a modicum of prepared opium daily,—it having been supposed by his predecessors that without it such prisoners would pine away and die. Dr. Ayres, however, knew better; and he at once put an end to the custom. He would not allow one grain of opium or other stimulant to be given to any prisoner, however advanced a smoker he might be. The result was that the hitherto pampered prisoners moaned and groaned, pretending, no doubt, to be very ill; but after a little time they got quite well. The Doctor has published his experiences on this subject in theFriend of China.

These persons know what pleases the missionaries, and so they detail to them all kinds of horrible stories respecting opium smoking, which, as I have before stated, are pure inventions. Trust a Chinaman to invent a plausible tale when it suits his purpose to do so. The missionaries do not smoke opium themselves, and have, therefore, no means of refuting the falsehoods thus related to them, or of testing their accuracy. They simply believe all these stories, and send them on to head-quarters in London, to be retailed by eloquent tongues at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. I have no doubt that every mail brings home numbers of apparently highly authenticated tales of this kind, every one of which is baseless. Thanks to the modern excursion agents, and to the present facilities for travelling, gentlemen can easily take a trip to China, and if any of them happen to have opium on the brain, they will take letters of introduction to missionary clergymen. On their arrival at Hong Kong they will perhaps be shown over the Tung-Wah hospital, where they see a number of wretched objects labouring under all kinds of diseases; they will go away fully impressed with the belief that all the patients shown to them are victims of opium smoking. They are then taken to an opium shop, or as the missionaries like tocall it, an “opium den”—though why an opium-smoking shop should be so termed, and a dram shop in London called a “gin palace,” I cannot understand—and are there shown half a dozen dirty-looking men, mostly thieves and blackguards, all smoking opium, and as they are quiet and motionless, they come to the conclusion that they are all in a dying state, having but a few days more to live. If they knew the facts, they would find perhaps that the very men they were commiserating were just then quietly planning a burglary or some piratical expedition for that very night. These kind of travellers go out to China with preconceived notions, and are quite prepared to believe anything and everything, however absurd or monstrous, about opium smoking. They will spend two days at Hong Kong, three at Canton, two or three at Shanghai. They will take copious notes at these places, omitting nothing, however incredible or absurd, that is told them, and return home with a full conviction that they have “done China,” when in reality they have only done themselves, and that, too, most completely. If they have thecacoethes scribendistrong upon them, they will probably write a book upon the subject; and so the miserable delusion is kept up.

’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.

Mr. Turner, in his volume, gives what he calls “a little apologue,” with the object of showing how the Indian Government injures China by supplying it with opium. If you will allow me, I will give you a short one, too. Let us suppose a young gentleman, well brought up, and a member of that excellent institution, the “Young Men’s Christian Association,” where he has heard the most eloquent speeches on the wickedness of this country in permitting the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and thus encouraging opium smoking—for your anti-opium agitator thinks it the height of virtue and propriety to drag his country through the mire on every occasion that presents itself. Let us call him Mr. Howard; it is a good name, and was once owned by a most benevolent man. He makes up his mind to go out to China and to see for himself the whole iniquity; for, despite his strong faith in his clerical mentors at Exeter Hall, he can hardly believe thathis own countrymen could really be the perpetrators of such dreadful wickedness as he has been told. He takes a letter of introduction to a missionary gentleman at Hong Kong, and another to a mercantile firm there. He expects, on his arrival, to see the streets crowded with the wretched-looking victims of the opium-pipe, crawling onwards towards their graves, whilst the merchant who is making his princely fortune by this terrible opium trade drives by in his curricle, looking complacently at his victims, just as a slave-owner of old might be expected to have gazed at his gangs of serfs wending their way to their scene of toil. Not seeing any but active, healthy-looking people, he concludes that the miserable creatures he is looking out for are in hospital, or lying up in their own houses. He calls upon Messrs. Thompson and Co., the mercantile firm to which he is accredited, and is well received by one of the partners, who invites him to stop at his house during his stay in Hong Kong—for our fellow-countrymen in China are the most hospitable people in the world. Mr. Howard declines, as he intends putting up at Mr. Jenkins’s, his missionary friend. The great subject on his mind is opium, so he comes to the point at once, and asks, “Is there much opium smoked in the colony?” “Oh, plenty,” answers Mr. Thompson; “two or three thousand chests arrive here every week.” “Do you sell much?” Mr. Howard asks. “No; we haven’t done anything in it these many years,” is the response. “Do many people smoke?” continues Howard, following up his subject. “Oh, yes: every Chinaman smokes.” “But where are all the people who are suffering from opium smoking?” again asks the inquirer, determined to get at the facts. “Ha, ha, ha!” laughs Mr. Thompson, but that gentleman is writing letters for the mail, and has not much time at his disposal. “Here, Compradore,” he says, addressing a Chinese who has been settling an account with one of the assistants, “this gentleman wants to know all about opium smoking.” The Compradore is the agent who conducts mercantile transactions between the foreign firms and the Chinese; he resides on his master’s premises, and is usually an intelligent and keen man of business, and, I may also add, an inveterate opium smoker. The two try to make themselves understood. Mr. Howard repeats the same questions to the Compradore thathe had just put to Mr. Thompson, and receives similar replies. Disappointed and surprised, Howard calls with his letter of introduction upon the missionary, to whom he tells what he has heard from Messrs. Thompson & Co. “Ah,” says the missionary, “they wouldn’t give you any information there; they are in the opium trade themselves.” But Mr. Howard tells him that Thompson had assured him that they had not been in the trade for years. “Ah,” returns the missionary, “you must not believe whathesays. His firm is making a princely fortune by opium.” “But where are the smokers?” asks Howard. “Oh, I will show them to you.” He then calls Achun his “boy.” “This gentleman,” he says to the latter, “wants to know about opium smoking. Take him to the Tung-Wah and to an opium shop, you savee?” “Yes, my savee” (meaning “I understand”), returns Achun, who is, of course, a devout convert, but who, notwithstanding, often in private indulges in the iniquity of the pipe. On they go to the Tung-Wah, which is the Chinese hospital before referred to, where he is shown some ghastly-looking men, all either smoking the “vile drug” or having opium pipes beside them. Two or three are shivering with ague; another is in the last stage of dropsy; another is in consumption, and so on. They are all pitiable-looking objects, wasted, dirty, and ragged. Poor Mr. Howard shrinks away in horror. “Are all these men dying from opium smoking?” he asks of his guide. “Yes, ebely one; two, tlee more day dey all die. Oh! velly bad! olla men dat smokee dat ting die,” says the person questioned, well knowing that what he has said is false, and that the poor creatures before him are only honest, decent coolies in the last stages of disease, who until they entered the hospital may never have had an opium pipe in their mouths. “Their poverty and not their will consented.” They had been admitted but a few days before to the Tung-Wah, where the Chinese doctor in charge had prescribed for them opium smoking as a remedy for their sickness and a relief for their pains. Poor Mr. Howard leaves the hospital bitterly reflecting upon the wickedness of the world and of his own countrymen in particular. As for Mr. Thompson, he is set down for a false deceitful man, a disgrace to his country, who should be made an example of. He and his guide then proceed to the opium shop. I shall, however, proceed there before them, and describe the placeand its occupants. Opposite to the entrance door are two well-dressed men, their clothes quite new, their heads well shaven, and having attached to them long and splendid queues. These men are lying on their sides, vis-à-vis, with their heads slightly raised, smoking away. If it were not for their villainous countenances they might pass for respectable shopkeepers. They are two thieves, who have just committed a burglary in a European house, from which they carried off three or four hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery, and they are now indulging in their favourite luxury on the proceeds. They have also exchanged their rags for new clothes, got shaved and trimmed, as Mr. Howard sees them. Now, wherever an extreme opium smoker is met, he will in general be found to be one of the criminal classes. In this shop there are three other men smoking. They are stalwart fellows, but dirty-looking, as they have just finished coaling a steamer, and are begrimed with coal dust. As the daily expenses of a steamer are considerable, it is a great object with sea captains to get their vessels coaled as quickly as possible, so that they may not be delayed in port. The men employed upon this work are usually paid by the job, and probably each will receive half-a-dollar for his share. They work with extraordinary vigour, and by the time they have finished they are often much distressed, and are inclined to lie down; their hearts, perhaps, are beating irregularly, and their whole frame unhinged. Being flush of money, for half-a-dollar, or two shillings, is quite a round sum for them, they have decided to go to the opium shop, and, by having a quiet whiff or two, bring the action of their hearts into rhythm, and restore themselves to their ordinary state. These poor coolies are honest fellows enough. They work hard, and are peaceful, unoffending creatures. Hundreds of them are to be seen hard at work every day in Hong Kong.

The interior of the opium shop is as described when Mr. Howard enters with the missionary’s servant. The moment the two well-dressed thieves see them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them. They close their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber. They are really in deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible. Mr. Howard asks his guide who they are. “Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey comedis side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men.” “You say they are good, respectable men?” says Mr. Howard. “Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee genlman.” “Oh, is not this a terrible thing?” says Mr. Howard, compressing his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, “Ah ya! what a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!” The other replies, “It’s to keep the sun away.” “How funny!” retorts the first speaker, “we wear hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool.” “Oh,” returns the other speaker, “the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away; and they would die, or become idiots.”[5]Mr. Howard, seeing them in their dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however, is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks his guide, “Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?” “Oh,” returns the other, “supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you.” Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary, to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them, and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop, where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just received, and, having so easilyearned two shillings, he quietly reclines on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium.

Now as Achun is a representative character, many like him being in the service of missionaries and other foreigners throughout China, I will give you a further specimen of the way such persons cheat and delude their masters. Achun, in whom Mr. Jenkins, the missionary, places implicit confidence, has of late been much exercised as to his “vails,” for Chinese servants are quite as much alive to the perquisites of their office as Jeames, John Thomas, or any others of our domestics here in England. Indeed, I may safely lay it down as a rule that, like cabmen, domestic servants will be found the same all over the world, “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and no sooner have you engaged your Chinese “boy” than his mind is at once set working as to the amount of drawbacks, clippings, and parings over and above his wages he may safely count upon in his new place. Achun is dissatisfied with the commission or drawback allowed him by Chook Aloong, the shopkeeper or compradore, who supplies Mr. Jenkins’s family with provisions and other household necessaries; he is allowed only ten per cent. of the monthly bill, and he considers that in all fairness he should get double that amount. Thus impressed, he makes energetic remonstrances on the subject to Chook Aloong, who is firm and will give no more than ten per cent. Achun is equal to the occasion. Now Mr. Jenkins and his family are simple and frugal in their dietary, but there are some articles of food they insist upon having of the best kind, in consequence of which their compradore sends them those articles and, indeed, all others of unobjectionable quality. Eggs which are not absolutely fresh, and meat, though it be game, if in the slightest degree “up,” they will have none of. Achun well knows all this, and he has determined to have Chook Aloong displaced. Having himself a partiality for eggs, he begins operations by daily appropriating to his own use some of those fresh eggs and substituting stale ones in their stead. In the like manner, instead of letting the family have the beef, mutton, and fowls nice and fresh as they are delivered,he holds them over until the bloom of freshness has departed. This state of affairs occasions some commotion in the family circle. The boy is sent for and shown that the eggs are bad and the meat “high”; he expresses great concern, and declares that he will forthwith call upon the compradore and compel him to make good the damage already done, and supply proper provisions in future. Mr. Jenkins, though angry, is not implacable, and is willing to believe that some mishap has occurred; for how could his old and trusted compradore treat him so badly? His hopes are, however, disappointed, for again and yet again the meat is bad, and, worse still, the eggs are—well, not fresh. The climax is reached one morning when poor Mr. Jenkins, in breaking his egg, finds, not the usual bright yellow yolk and spotless albumen within, but a young chick almost fledged. Horror and disgust seize him, the old Adam over-masters him for a moment, and, full of wrath, he roars for the boy. Achun appears the very picture of innocence, when Mr. Jenkins, ashamed of his outburst of wrath and now quite calm explains thecontretemps. He has even in the reaction regained some of his good humour. “Look here, Achun,” he says, showing the chick, “this is too bad, you know. Supposee I wanchee egg,—can catchee him; supposee I wanchee chicken—can catchee chicken. No wanchee egg and chicken alla same together.” Achun perceives the joke, and knowing his master’s weakness, says, “Oh, ho, massa, velly good, dat belong numba one. ‘No wanchee egg and chicken alla same togedda,’” continues the cunning rascal, repeating his master’s words, “Oh velly funny, velly good, massa, ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Jenkins is pleased at the mild flattery of his boy, who has now advanced a step or two in his estimation. “Oh, massa, dat man, Chook Aloong, velly bad man,” continues Achun when his merriment had subsided. “Him smokee too much opium pipe; he no mind his pidgin plaupa, he smokee alla day.” “Oh! ho! is that the way?” asks the missionary, a new light dawning for the first time upon him. “And so Chook Aloong is an opium smoker?” “Ye-s,” replies Achun, prolonging the word. “Too much opium, plenty opium. More betta you get anoda compado sah—some good plaupa man dat no smokee.” “Very well, Achun,” says Mr. Jenkins with a sigh. “It is plain I must get somebody else. Find me outsome other man, and, mind, he must not smoke opium.” “Hab got, massa,” returns the boy delighted with his success. “Hab got velly good man, him numba one good compado”; and in walks the person indicated, who has been listening outside all the time. “This belong Sam Afoong, him do all ting plaupa,” the fact being that this very Sam Afoong is the greatest cheat in the whole market. “Oh, you’re the man,” says Mr. Jenkins. “I hope you don’t use opium.” “Oh no, sah,” returns the other, who is in fact an inveterate smoker, “my neba smokee; dat opium pipe velly bad. It hab kill my fadda, my six bludda, my——.” But here he is stopped by a signal from Achun, who saw that his friend, in familiar parlance, was “laying it on too thickly.” Sam Afoong vows to supply the best of good things, and does so, and the Jenkins family are no longer troubled with bad provisions; but had the lady of the establishment gone through the formality of weighing every joint of meat that her new compradore supplied, she would have found that every pound was short of two or three ounces, for thus Sam Afoong recouped himself for the large per-centage bestowed on Achun.

To prove that the missionaries are deceived in the way I have described I will refer you to a passage in Mr. Storrs Turner’s own book, where even he admits that one of his own converts, who had assured him that he never smoked, and no doubt had pledged himself never to do so, was found regaling himself with the iniquity. At p. 32 Mr. Turner says, “I have caught a man smoking who had only half an hour before denied to me that he was a smoker, and condemned the habit.” Yet such are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information about opium smoking. For further proof of this I will quote again from Dr. Ayres’ article, inThe Friend of China. This is what he says:—

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